party food

I’m skipping that thing where we pretend to be on a diet for the first three weeks of December to punish ourselves for Thanksgiving. There are a few reasons for this, the first being that I think punishment for food-related behaviors leads to more unhealthy behaviors, and on and on. BUT MAINLY, our post-Thanksgiving lives are chock-full of celebrations, and no one wants a salad for their birthday. Jay’s birthday was yesterday and Beck’s is in less than two weeks, so here’s the first of many holiday party foods.

They’re balls with ham and cheese and chicken.

They were, as all good ideas on this blog are, Jay’s idea, and they were a fantastic one. I love the nostalgic flavors of chicken cordon bleu, crispy exterior, gooey interior, but the process is pretty arduous and a meatball is just so friendly and celebratory, right? For the sake of the holidays, you can totally make these in advance, bake them, then reheat them in the oven until the cheese melts again so all the mess + raw meat nonsense can happen well in advance of your event.

The ingredients are simple, and I’m so glad I’m showing these to you TODAY because they are a perfect use-up for Thanksgiving ham, if you have any of that lying around. I made a few things with leftover ham this weekend and all were just as delicious as eating ham on its own.

Cheers to my wonderful husband and the start of what I hope is the most celebratory of seasons for you! No punishment or self-loathing allowed.

No but really. Sort of. We celebrated Thanksgiving last week with my family on Friday, so on Thursday we decorated the house for Christmas (got our first real tree!) and putzed around in the baby’s room and since it was Jay’s birthday I asked him what he’d like to eat and he said “fish balls.” I think originally he had something Asian in mind but then started talking about lemon and parmesan and I was all THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN.

Also, I did originally plan to make these round, not flat, but I have a hard time keeping balls round – I find they always kind of end up with a flat edge anyway, so I figured why not just beat the flattening to the punch?

So what we have here is this: little mini fish cakes with CHUNKS of cod, not ground up to smithereens, and a leeetle bit of filler for flavor and to hold everything together. Then it’s coated in parm and panko and fried so gently AND THEN we have a tangy but creamy dipper with dill and other yummy flavors. I photographed this as an appetizer first, then tossed some of the sauce with lettuce and made a cod cake salad, and no one in this house was mad. You will adore these.

MAN. This day took awhile to come, eh? My week felt long. How was your week?

The problem with getting home around nine every night is that you want to still hang out and eat dinner and do fun things BUT then you end up staying up past eleven which is WAY TOO LATE and then you don’t want to get up to go to work.

So, to reward ourselves for making it to work every day this week like big kids, let’s have beef and peppers covered in cheese with pickled jalapenos, ok?

I’m really stinking excited that it’s the weekend! I have another 20 hours of yoga this weekend, which makes me happy and peaceful.

…and grumpy on Mondays, but whatever.

This is a total throwback that I’ve been making for YEARS. Like, since I was 16. In Tokyo. One of my cheerleading coaches made this and gave us all the recipe, and it became a staple at our super mandatory and fun sleepovers. Cheer sleepovers are totally the best after a long game – and food like this was MANDATORY. Sure, we had the standard rice balls covered in seaweed that everyone eats in high school (ha), but AMERICAN food like this was, like, totally our favorite food to make, even though avocados cost $5 each and Japanese food is better anyways.